Village eyes $3.4M proposed budget
GREEN ISLAND, N.Y. » Village officials have officially started the process of going over the 2018-19 proposed village budget.
According to Mayor Ellen McNulty-Ryan’s roughly $3.48 million proposed budget, the village tax rate would be set at $12.3086 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which is a 2 percent rate increase.
The homeowner impact on the proposed tax rate is $24 on average home assessed at $100,000. The proposed budget is a $122,034 decrease over the current budget. The villages allowable tax levy to stay under the tax cap is $2,055,486 for 2018-19, but officials set the proposed actual is $2,049,513.
Village officials said the tax rate percentage increase has remained below 4 percent for 14 of the last 15 years.
During a budget public meeting Wednesday night, Sean Ward, executive assistant to McNulty-Ryan, said that the proposed budget will set aside $103,360 in surplus funds compared to $196,014 being budgeted for surplus last year.
“We set up the budget where we can really track it on a dayby- day basis,” said Ward.
However, Ward explained how village officials don’t have any numbers as to whether or not
water and sewer rates will increase for taxpayers since they want to do a rate analysis before proposing any rates. Officials said that the rates will be set in June or July for August billing.
“Water fund rates are user fee revenue based, so we rely on how much revenue we bring in and we pretty much have to [ have] our budget based on that as opposed to the general fund where we try to figure out what our expenditures are and then we set the tax rate based on that, now you can do the same thing for the water and sewer rates but you would have to do an analysis,” explained Ward. “This is a little different than normal, this year we’ve had some extreme conditions with our infrastructure, where we have actually doubled the amount in our repairs budget this year because of water breaks, it’s been a terrible year and we decided that we’re going to do the rate analysis.”
Ward said that the village has not raised its rates much in several years, but that residents could see one this year.
“We’ve only raised [water] rates three times in the last 50 years I think, but I am going to be honest, I anticipate that we will have some type of an increase [this year],” said Ward.
“We do a very realistic budget and every year our departments have kept us under budget,” added McNulty-Ryan. “This year with the water breaks…. part of the reason why we can’t establish a water rate is [because] one of the breaks that haven’t been fixed yet is a break in the river, so that’s going to be very expensive, so we need to get some good hard numbers before we do anything with that.”
Ward also highlighted the village’s shared services agreements and how those agreements continue to help the village save money each year.
Village officials said a shared service dispatch with Albany County saved the village over $60,000 in annual savings for five years prior and now $150,000; with no payments next year. Ward also mentioned how memorandum of agreements with other local municipalities also saves the village funds annually.
According to the proposed budget, officials have allocated funds for a part time engineer at about $7,000 along with a part time code enforcement officer at $8,000.
Ward said village officials will soon inform the public of when a public hearing will be held for the purpose of establishing the water and sewer rates.